Since I’ve decided to share with you what I have on my mind, but without committing that you are going to get a new text every week, I can as well start.
I was reading yesterday, Lisa Congdon writes that we have to write our blog regularly, so the audience knows that something new is coming, so they can come to your page jumping around (in their minds only) and thinking how they’re gonna open a new post that will look like it came from some magazine directly: there will be a header image, then a few illustrations that fit the topic and last, but not the least – the story that will also be witty, so they actually want to dedicate 6 minutes of their lives to read it. You don’t say! Interesting (I say to myself). Of course I don’t say it out loud, it is in my interest that people read what I write, so they can share it, that my audience think I’m fun and then maybe even have a look at the rest of things I put on that website of mine. That is actually the real reason why I am even writing a blog in the first place. Oops, I just said the horrible truth: I am not writing for the sake of writing (art pour art), but because I am a sneaky person wanting to bring traffic to her website. Yes traffic. I have to look very professional and use these professional words. But can you imagine people start coming to my website because of these blog postings instead of my illustrations?!
I mean, I’ve been sitting on 17 chairs at the same time in order to get featured in some magazines (in Bosnia we say we sit on 2 chairs when we are doing many things at the same time and I am currently sitting on 17 chairs), to get people to recognise my art and say: “Damn, this looks cool!”. Can you imagine this post coming to some magazine and they contact me because I am funny and witty and they want me to WRITE for them?! Well THAT would be interesting!
By the way, all this is an introduction to the text. I sat down at my laptop because I wanted to share with people how I felt a phantom limb pain until I started drawing. You live every day and something is missing all the time and you have no idea what is missing and you say: “Man, I have everything, I have a job, I have a roof over my head, I have 4 tomato trees on my window and I eat fresh cherry tomatoes every day, what else do I need?! ” But still that hole, that agony, as if you were sitting and one leg feels constantly numb. I mean, realistically I may be numb really because I’ve been working from home since 4 months now and regardless of the Vitra chair I confiscated from the office, I’m squeezing my femoral vein. But I chose this graphic designer’s job myself and I will not complain. I like to draw other people’s (and a bit of my own) ideas for money.
Let me return to the essential topic: phantom limb pain and agony. 😀 That is a very current topic, my dear readers (and maybe even fans of my illustrations, who knows?). I don’t know if it’s because I’m from Bosnia, a living bloody fairy tale or because we grew up in the 1990s in the Balkans, so I learned that that is a constant feeling. I remember when I went to Italy because of my studies and I realised everyone were somehow satisfied and happy. I was like: who dis? HOW?! There is nothing like what Brazilians call saudade. And how do you think I know that word, how did I learn it, and I don’t even speak Portuguese at all? Well, nostalgic like-minded people meet and talk about that something that is missing. The gap, the hole, the agony. That was not random at all! 🙂
So saudade is constantly present, I move that leg that was numb (because of the phantom limb pain, you’ve guessed), then the other leg gets numb or there is a hole in my stomach or, even worse, the head. And as I wrote in the previous text, I watched my boyfriend relentlessly create his music with his little lights from his, but it’s not even a synthesizer… There’s something, I think it’s called a controller. It is called Ableton. That’s the brand, not an instrument. Now those who are reading and know about Ableton have double facepalm and shaking their heads in disappointment. Maybe they even stopped reading, but guess, I deserve it. And so, he types something there and then plays with it and in the end it turns out something GREAT. And I’m typing on a sketchbook and I still have a blank piece of paper even though I killed myself typing. With a pencil, I didn’t type with empty fingers. What do you even think?! That would look strange.
But, I started. I started 3 months ago and, guys, I like what I draw. I had no idea what to draw, I was just randomly drawing. It wasn’t anything, it didn’t look like it had a common style or a concept. (Also because it doesn’t.) The Internet says: you HAVE TO find your artistic voice. You’ll get to that, you won’t even know how. Pure lie, guys. It’s not true that we don’t know how. Now I will tell you what I have concluded so far, and I am literally a beginner. It’s practice. A habit. Who works every day, fingers produce a multiplied number of ideas. Exponentially. Before 1-2 things/ideas barely occurred to me, now 10 of them are already sitting in my brain while I am writing this post! I don’t know what to draw first, my notebook will explode. Not to mention the fingers – buuuuurning! And it’s great. The only thing is, I don’t have enough time. Because, you know, work. Real job, I mean. Work eats up my 40 hours a week, and that vein was squeezed well various times while sitting. But I am not quitting. I am even totally happy that I am now creating something beautiful and creative with 35. The title is 34-35. I confused you, huh? Well, I started in April, when I was still 34. I turned 35 last week. If my grandmother saw what I just wrote and how I still think I’ll make a living from drawing, she would just go to the kitchen without even shaking her head.
Well this text got out of hand and it’s too long, and I did not say anything essential. I planned to say that I hope that one day I will draw a lot more illustrations than sitting in a Vitra chair and drawing someone else’s (and a little bit also mine) ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I might buy that chair myself, it’s really comfy.
Here, I shared my dream with you. A little, not everything. I didn’t even mention I want to sit at my terrace and draw. I mean, why would I even mention that?! Then I would have to tell you that I don’t even have a balcony here in this flat. And I already mentioned cherry tomatoes. Why do you think I pointed out “at the window”? Okay, I’ll stop now. 🙂
Until the next reading.
Yours Tamara.